From visa processing to trade negotiations and international business development, Canada’s foreign service officers are on strike and planning to ramp up job action measures in the next few weeks — measures their union president says could have a serious impact in a short period of time.

In mid-March members of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO) voted 82 per cent in favour of taking action, PAFSO president Tim Edwards told iPolitics, calling it an “overwhelming mandate.”

“We reached an impasse in negotiations with Treasury Board in January, so we began at that point to prepare for a vote,” Edwards said.

At issue, he explained, is pay equity: the wage gap between what foreign service officers are paid when they’re rotated back to headquarters compared to those in other occupational groups within government doing similar work.

In some cases, the difference can be over $10,000.

The Treasury Board says it will bargain in good faith, but noted foreign service postings are prized positions.

“The foreign service is highly sought after and a well-paid posting,” said Andrea Mandel-Campbell, director of communications for Treasury Board President Tony Clement. “We’ll continue to bargain in good faith.”

On Tuesday, though, PAFSO initiated measures to rectify that difference in pay scale.

“This week is simply the electronic picket — that you saw — the out of office bounce-back that anybody emailing a foreign service officer will receive. It’s to start getting the word out about this,” he said.

“These measures will be rolled out incrementally in the weeks ahead in escalating degrees of severity.”

While ambassadors and others in management positions aren’t included in the job action, and certain designated officials will be left out as well — including those involved in humanitarian assistance, national defence, and border security — Canadian businesses and travelers could soon feel the brunt of the strike.

“Less than 15 per cent of our group is designated essential for (the) purposes of job actions. In other words, they’re not allowed to participate in any job action activities,” Edwards explained.

On the immigration side, there could very quickly be a visa backlog.

“You have that daily grind of cranking out thousands and thousands of tourist, academic, student, vistor visas, plus the processing of immigration applicants — so people trying to come as skilled workers, etc. [will soon be affected],” Edwards said.

Then there’s the trade commissioner service that helps Canadian exporters get established in foreign markets, and all the foreign service officers involved in the Harper government’s myriad trade agreement talks.

“You would have the trade commissioners themselves — anybody doing that kind of trade development work,” Edwards said, adding that a very large part of Canadian trade negotiation teams are made up of foreign service officers.

“We believe the impact would be fairly serious in a short period of time.”

Edwards says that PAFSO has already given in to the government’s two key demands — an annual wage increase of 1.5 per cent and the elimination of severance pay for retirements and resignations — but that they feel the wage gap is a longstanding issue of fairness.

“We’re deserving under principles of basic fairness of compensation at least equal to those performing the same work here in Ottawa in other professional groups,” he said.

“We keep telling our deputy ministers and ADMs that this can go way very quickly. There’s a very reasonably priced solution to this. It’s less than 2.5 per cent of the total (foreign service) payroll.”